


don't let me in, i don't know what i'd do

by getmean



Category: The Pacific (TV)
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Healing, Hurt/Comfort, Injury, M/M, Physical Therapy, Post-Canon, snafu learns how to ask for help: the fic, yearning like Big yearning like decades long yearning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-15
Updated: 2019-09-15
Packaged: 2020-10-19 08:17:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,716
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20654063
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/getmean/pseuds/getmean
Summary: It’s not in his nature to ask for things, but the last month has inverted him so far into himself, turned his life onto its head, that Snafu doesn’t feel very much like himself anyway. Like fumbling for a light switch in the dark; every facet of who he was before the pain and the hospital beds and all the hands on him, manipulating prodding testing — he can’t seem to slide his hand across and make contact with the parts of himself that had shrunk away, not just yet.





	don't let me in, i don't know what i'd do

**Author's Note:**

> so this is a commission for my good pal lea, who wanted to see some of that good old hurt/comfort between snafu and burgie... which is really VERY woke and i was really happy to write this and enjoyed it a lot! (if you can tell by the extra word count, lmao). thank you for such a fun premise and thank you for being so patient while my laptop was busy dying and then being resurrected by the apple store lmao -- the extra few thousand words are on ME for that :~) hope u enjoy!

Snafu practically writes Burgie from his hospital bed; he’s hours discharged, and his hands shake as he pens a hasty letter, the back of his right hand bruised black from the cannula that had laid embedded there for weeks. His thigh aches, his ankle aches, the pain in his knee so great it’s almost numbing, but he manages a few steps to the door, where he leans against the side table that holds all his spare change, his keys, and rests for a moment. If he thinks very hard about the letter grasped in his clammy, bruised hand, he knows it’ll find its place in the trash with the similar ones he had written and thrown away. _I know it’s been a long time_, he’d written, and, _I know I can trust you._ Not easy words to write, let alone say. He’s glad for a lack of a telephone number, glad at least for the opportunity to turn to the written word instead. Snafu knows he’s never been good with his words; never an honest man, never erudite or measured or any of the things he had least has a chance at in a letter.

It’s not in his nature to ask for things, but the last month has inverted him so far into himself, turned his life onto its head, that Snafu doesn’t feel very much like himself anyway. Like fumbling for a light switch in the dark; every facet of who he was before the pain and the hospital beds and all the hands on him, manipulating prodding testing — he can’t seem to slide his hand across and make contact with the parts of himself that had shrunk away, not just yet. Not with the bruise blackening his hand and his knee like a molten centre of all the pain in the world, not with the wheelchair sat dark and patient by his door like some awful reminder. So he writes the letter, and he struggles down the three steps to the street on legs that feel newborn, and wishes badly that he’d at least brought his cane, and then wishes badly that he didn’t have to think that thought.

He posts the letter. Takes a breather on a bus stop bench until he feels less like he’s going to keel over, and then makes his slow walk home. The mailbox is on the end of his block; so close it’s visible from his kitchen window. The trip had taken him close to thirty minutes. Sometimes navigating life in this new body feels so hopeless it renders him silent, immobile. He spends the rest of the day in bed under a painkiller haze, too drowsy to feel much of anything, too drowsy to even begin to regret reaching out.

———

It had happened on a Friday, and the whole thing is such a giant cosmic _joke_ that it feels somewhat fitting for it to happen before Snafu’s much-anticipated weekend. He’d had thoughts of beer on his mind, of sleeping in late on the Saturday, of heading out in the truck for some fishing on Sunday afternoon. Sun, beer, and forgetting all about his stupid menial job for a couple days.

And then the goddamn car had slipped from the goddamn jack and Snafu’s weekend plans had turned to blood loss, to pain, to a dozen fucking doctors with serious faces not telling him a thing. Then that weekend turned into a week, two weeks, drawing out and out until he’d spent one month in that hospital with nothing to show for it but a mess of pins and plates in his knee, which was so swollen and painful from the trauma that he’d been wheeled out of the place in a chair. He’d waited until he was in his own home to cry, of course. Sat on his sofa with this throbbing knee and the dark shape of the wheelchair to his left and a stack of bills on his kitchen table; he’d put his face into his hands and cried like a child.

He hasn’t cried since; it’s the last shred of dignity he felt he could retain.

Burgie wrote him back quickly. Not a few days after Snafu had so painstakingly dropped the letter off in the mailbox, he woke to find a letter on his doormat addressed in Burgie’s familiar slanted handwriting. The emotion that zips through him is something closer to dread than excitement; some uncomfortable hybrid of the two perhaps. It’s been long enough since he’d sent the letter that he’s had time to regret it, but he opens it nonetheless, edging his finger along the tear he’d made as he sits himself down at the kitchen table. Today is a good pain day, which almost makes him regret his desperate attempt to reach out even more; it’s hard to remember pain in the near-absence of it. Then his mind helpfully reminds him of the evening three nights ago in which he’d vomited from it, and he eases the letter from the envelope with that sickly mix of dread and anticipation curdling in his stomach. 

_It’s so good to hear from you_, he reads, chin on his knuckles as he presses the paper to the tabletop. _Even under these circumstances._ And Snafu has to fight the urge to abandon the letter, to fold it back up and leave it for when he feels more ready to read it, but a small part of him knows that he’s never gonna be ready to read it. Never gonna be ready to see Burgie offering the help he knew he would — why else would he go out on such a limb? Somehow, subconsciously, he knew that Burgie would be there for him. Just like he always was during the war, just like he was right after; sending letters for months until they petered out, all Snafu’s fault because he couldn’t find it in himself to respond to them. He owes it to Burgie to not let this one go unanswered, and drops his attention back to the paper gripped in his shaky hands, lights a cigarette for something to hold onto as he finishes it. 

There’s little to the letter beyond what’s needed. Burgie promises to get the next train he can, promises to stay as long as needed, and signs off _I assume you’re still at the same address_, which sends a slow creep of guilt through Snafu as he thinks again of all those letters that went unanswered, some even unopened. He doesn’t deserve Burgie’s care, and he feels terrible, ungrateful, at the feelings that Burgie’s promises give rise to in him; fear and dread and regret. He wishes he wasn’t so weak. He wishes this wasn’t the reason for their first correspondence in years. He wishes he was the man that Burgie had seen last; whole and healthy on that train, hours out from leaving Gene on there without a goodbye. That had been the beginning of his tumble into anonymity, into divorcing himself from his past by abandoning it all so completely that he’d tossed his dog tags into the trash not minutes after alighting from the train. He’d never wanted to be that man again, but now Snafu finds himself yearning that that careless, arrogant way he’d stepped away from four years of his life. He wishes he could step away from all this so easily. 

But now Burgie is on his way; Snafu’s past hurtling towards him at a pace he knows he’s helpless to stop. He wonders briefly how much it’ll hurt when it collides, but brushes the thought away. He can stand a little more hurt if it means he doesn’t have to struggle through this alone.

———-----

“Well,” He says, when he sees Snafu, stood in the doorway and leaning heavily on his cane. That familiar smile, those familiar kind blue eyes. Snafu braces himself for impact, braces himself for shock, for horror, but all Burgie says is, “God, Snafu, you’re just the same.”

Snafu feels his anxiety settle just slightly; the fear of how Burgie will react when he sees him again quieted, pushed to the back for now. He’d never thought he could be looked at and considered _the same_; it’s comforting and disquieting all at once. “How long’s it been, Burg?” He asks, shuffling out of the way so Burgie can come in.

His eyes crinkle, something wry in his tone as he mutters, “Far too long, Snaf.”

He sets his bags down, and Snafu closes the door, flips the deadlock, and they are alone together for the first time in years. The first time ever, maybe. Were you ever really alone in a pack of thirty men? Gene at least was always in arms reach, Snafu had made sure of that. 

“How you are feeling?” Burgie asks, at the same time as Snafu murmurs, “You look good.”

The silence that follows is weighty, just toeing the line of awkward. Snafu wishes he could snatch his words back from the soupy air between them, wants to roll his eyes at himself, wants to cover his face. Of course Burgie looks good, it’s _Burgie_. Ten years of clean living, Snafu’s sure. All that good Texan air, all the sunlight he can handle; Snafu can see it in his face, freckled and suntanned, a good, honest face. Handsome, just as he’d been in his twenties. Snafu feels wan and thin in comparison, acutely aware of the ugly mess of scar tissue that lies under his jeans. He can see the changes in Burgie; the lines on his face that hadn’t been there a decade ago, and wonders if Burgie is making the same quick catalogue of all the ways in which Snafu has changed too. It makes him feel anxious, for a moment; afraid, and then he remembers that immediate, knee-jerk _you’re just the same_ and he’s settled once again.

“I’m fine.” He mutters, in the end, and rubs his hand over his face. He’s sweating in the close, small apartment, shirt sticking to his back. “Jesus, Burgie. How are you?”

“Doin’ a little better than you, I think.” Burgie says, and his smile takes any sting out of his words. He sets his duffel down by the sofa before crossing the room to the huge bay windows, beginning to work on the stiff latches as Snafu looks on. “This place is like a goddamn greenhouse.” The windows come open with an audible crack, and Snafu makes a low, impressed noise that makes Burgie’s smile grow. That same old smile — huge and toothy and curving his eyes just right. 

The breeze let in by the open windows is heavenly, and Snafu gives up all pretences; sinking into one of the kitchen chairs with a groan, leg held out awkwardly in front of him as he tilts his face to catch the draft. “Thanks,” He murmurs, closing his eyes for a second as the room ever so slightly tilts from the effort of standing for so long. He can tell he looks grey; can feel the cold sweat springing up between his shoulder blades. “This is weird, huh.”

“Weird.” Burgie echoes, and Snafu can track him by sound alone; the creaking of the floorboards beneath his weight as he steps from window to kitchen, skirting Snafu’s slumped shape at the table. “You don’t look so good.”

Snafu hears the rush of a faucet, and when he opens his eyes there’s a glass of water being set down by his elbow, and Burgie’s expression is careful, watchful. He snorts, and rights himself a little. “I may have downplayed the seriousness of it all in my letter.” He admits, eyes following Burgie as he takes a seat opposite him, feeling a quick dart of pleasure at how easily the man has shouldered his way into his apartment, how normal he looks against the familiar backdrop already. Then he registers Burgie’s expression, that brows-pulled-down face of concern, and he scoffs, suddenly feeling naked, vulnerable. “I ain’t gonna die.” He says, and Burgie’s brows beetle further.

“I didn’t say you were gonna.”

Chatter from the street below; fast paced French. Snafu follows it absently, his knee throbbing in time with the beats of his heart. _— and I told you! She stole from me! My very own — _. The voices fade from earshot, and Snafu tunes back in just in time to catch Burgie leaning forward over the table, face set as he asks, “Tell me how to help you.”

It’s an impossible question, and one that Snafu knows he needs to find an answer for quickly. He’d dragged Burgie out here for a reason; it was too late to get cold feet, to want to go back to that solitary lifestyle he’s sworn by up until this point. He knocks his head back against the wall behind him, casts his eyes to the ceiling and mutters, “Just tell me how you are. What you’ve been up to.” The pain is radiating from his knee, now. Wildfire, set to burn him up to nothing but cinders. And he can feel Burgie’s uncertainty coming off him in waves, and knows the man well enough — or at least some incarnation of the man — to head him off before he tries to fix everything. “Please.” He breathes, letting himself sound as pathetic as he feels, knowing that there’s no one in the world more equipped to be pathetic in front of.

There’s a long moment of silence in which Snafu watches the sun dance on the ceiling, and then Burgie clears his throat, Snafu smells cigarette smoke, and Burgie says, “Ranchin’, took over from my Daddy.” He pauses, and Snafu can hear the cigarette burn with his inhale. “Gettin’ older.” He laughs. “Nothin’ much besides.”

“And Florence?” Snafu asks the ceiling, and the pregnant pause that follows his words tells him everything he needs to know. He picks his head back up just as Burgie drops his gaze to the glowing end of his cigarette. “Oh, Burg. I’m sorry.”

He shrugs a shoulder, rolling the cigarette between his fingertips. “’S fine.” He glances up, something sardonic in the line of his mouth. “First divorce in the family, if you can believe it.”

“Trailblazer.” Snafu announces, and reaches for the glass of water. He feels sick; mouth dry. A headache is creeping slowly but surely across his temple, over his eye. “It’s okay, I gotta divorce too.” It’s a testament to how well Burgie still knows his character that he barely reacts. Just a silent quirk of his eyebrows, and Snafu shrugs, and nods. “So you ain’t alone.”

There’s a beat of silence. Snafu watches in delight as Burgie’s expression wobbles, a frown wrinkling his brow, and then he murmurs, “You didn’t,” and Snafu bursts out laughing, forgetting for a second his headache, his pain, the bad taste in his mouth. 

“You think I’d be the type to get married?” He asks, near-breathless with laughter. Burgie is grinning and shaking his head, and it feels so much like old times that Snafu can almost forget where they are, and why Burgie is with him. He’s twenty-two again, and whole; drunk on rice wine in some Chinese bar, sat on Gene’s lap with Burgie to his side, everything right in the world. “You think if I was a divorcee I’d be callin’ you down here to come help me out?” It’s not often he can think fondly on his war, but the snatches of true happiness amongst all that shit sometimes trip him up, have him looking back on it all through rose tinted glasses.

Burgie grins down at the tabletop, ashing his cigarette into the tray between them. “Snafu, we were as near married as two men can get and you know that.” He snorts to himself, and when he lifts his gaze Snafu finds himself shot through with something unknowable — like nostalgia and ancient yearning muddled up together. “You remember Gloucester?”

“I remember havin’ to wear your underwear after I left all mine behind on that stinkin’ fuckin’ island.” Snafu says, and he can hear himself how his tone has changed, and knows that Burgie notices it too. His smile wilts slightly, and then his expression shrinks back to something careful and distant, and Snafu wishes he could draw his knees to his chest just to keep from feeling looked over like some kinda _specimen_. But his knee doesn’t bend like that anymore and he knows it; feels like Burgie can see it. He finishes his cigarette and Snafu finishes his water, and it’s a long time before either of them speak again. Still, something faraway and half-forgotten tugs at Snafu, something that reminds him absurdly of Gene.

“Why’d you stop replying?” Burgie asks, finally, and Snafu closes his eyes, tips his head back against the wall. He’d been expecting this; it had only been a matter of time.

“Reminded me too much of everything.” He mutters, quick, like getting it out fast enough means it wouldn’t hurt on the way out. It still hurts, but so does the rest of him; it’s a tiny hurt in a sea of pain. He shifts in his seat, and adds, “Had some sorta ideas about forgettin’. It weren’t you.”

“Did you stop writin’ to Gene too?”

Snafu smiles to himself, not caring whether Burgie is watching to see or not. “I’d have to start to stop, Burg.” He can sense the surprise in Burgie’s silence, can understand it even if he resents it. He and Gene had been joined at the hip those four long years; he knows it makes little sense to hear that they hadn’t continued on the same into peacetime. He glances back at the man just in time to catch his expression; something thoughtful and quite serious, before it shifts to something so blandly neutral that it’s more telling than the expression before. “What?” He asks, watching Burgie closely. 

“Nothin’.” He says, but Snafu knows Burgie just as well as Burgie knows him, and can see the question rising in his throat, can tell that he’s not done. And surely enough, Snafu barely has to wait a minute before Burgie is blurting, “Is that why you asked me, not him?”

Snafu almost gives in to the urge to laugh, he really does. The urge to dismiss it, to make it sound absurd, to make it all a joke so as to avoid the real answer as to why he’d scrawled Burgie’s name on that letter and not Gene’s. Half of him doesn’t even know himself, but it’s the other part of him that is yearning for that quick and easy dismissal of the question, that knows exactly why. _Too much between us_, Snafu wants to say, and it’s the truth but a fragment of it. Just one piece of the bigger puzzle that is his choosing Burgie over Gene. _You see me for who I am_, he thinks, and _you’ve always kept me safe. You can do anything_, flowing right into _I think I loved him._

He stops there. Burgie has that careful expression on his face again, like he knows just how weighty his question was, and Snafu knows he needs to settle on a reply, needs to pluck sense from that rush of thought; something that isn’t too much, something that doesn’t give him away, which is near impossible. In truth, Burgie is neutral ground, and Gene feels a little too close to heartbreak for comfort. Everything that had passed between himself and Gene was too much and not enough all at once, and the prospect of having him see Snafu like this is not even something to consider. He swallows, and looks away. 

“I asked you because I trust you.” He murmurs, eyes on the ashtray between them, ears pinking with the half-truth. He doesn’t look up to see Burgie’s reaction to that, just eases his thumb into his knee and tries to massage the ache from it, even if for a second. Voices chatter below them on the street, and Burgie sighs, and the chair creaks as he leans back in it. 

“You’re just the same, Snaf.” He mutters, and Snafu smells cigarette smoke again. “Just the same as you’ve always been.”

———

Burgie gets to work the next day with no hesitation. He’d slept on the couch, refusing Snafu’s offer of him taking the bed like it was the most absurd thing he’s ever heard, so Snafu wakes after him to the smell of frying eggs, and is momentarily confused before his sluggish brain reminds him of where he is, and who he’s there with. He’d taken a couple painkillers before bed the previous night; all the strain of the day seeming to fall onto him all at once, but they’d sent him off to sleep easily, and quickly. It means his head is foggy when he wakes, and Snafu groans as he sits up, taking in the scene before him.

“Burg.” He mutters, running a hand through his tangled hair. “I can do that myself.”

Burgie, dressed only in a large t-shirt and his boxer shorts, hums distractedly. “Morning, Snaf.” He’s wielding a spatula, and if Snafu cranes his head a little he can see scrambled eggs in the pan, and feels shame drop like a weight into his stomach. 

“Hey, I can cook myself breakfast, y’know.”

Burgie looks away from the pan at that, a frown already crumpling his brow as he waves his hand, and says, “No, no, it’s fine. I got it.”

Snafu grits his teeth, that shame curdling into annoyance as he heaves himself to the edge of the bed, that ever-present streak of stubbornness rising to the surface as he tests his knee, and then stands. “Burgie, cut it out.” And there must be an edge to his voice that he can’t hear, because Burgie stops, and sets the spatula down. Very slowly, Snafu says, “I can cook myself breakfast.”

His knee trembles under his weight, but he refuses to sit, staring Burgie down until he nods and steps away from the stove, something vaguely contrite in his expression. “Got it.” He murmurs, watching Snafu closely as he limps to the stove and picks up the abandoned spatula. His head still feels stuffed to the brim with cottonwool — everything very far away and dreamy — and he shakes his head once, just to clear it.

“Please don’t do everythin’ for me.” He mutters, fast, eyes on the eggs. “I’ve gotta have somethin’ left.”

“Got it.” Burgie says again, and from that moment on Snafu’s breakfast is his to make; and his lunch, and his dinner. It’s a small victory, but a victory nonetheless; a triumph over a body that still feels so far from his own.

It takes a while to work out their new arrangement; longer perhaps than Snafu had anticipated, though he’s sure he’s mostly to blame. Like he’d expected Burgie to come back into his life and slip easily in alongside him like he used to. Back during the war, back when him and Gene and Burgie all lived in each other’s pockets, Burgie had been good at reading Snafu — sometimes too good for comfort. He’d somehow always know what Snafu needed before he even knew himself, and Snafu expects the same now, and is more than thrown off when that instant _knowledge_ doesn’t resurface from the mire of years passed. He can’t stop comparing now to then; it feels something of a compulsion, a knee-jerk reaction when he spots something that has changed. 

“How d’you like your coffee again?” Burgie asks him, and Snafu wonders if time can better be measured by what’s forgotten than what’s remembered.

“Nothin’ in it.” He says, shortly. Today is a day of pain, a day of bitter frustration, and he has little energy to spare to his Burgie-anxieties — he has to save it all for his injury-anxieties, his body-anxieties, all the goddamn anxieties that leave him quiet and angry and obsessively comparing himself to the man Burgie had known. He hadn’t expected this. He’d never planned for the eventuality that bringing back such a large chunk of his past would force him face to face with it, and now it’s here he doesn’t know how to sidle around it. Every move brings him face to face with those long, war-torn years, and as much as he loves having Burgie’s steady, comforting presence around him, he can’t shake the uneasiness it brings too. 

Burgie frowns, and Snafu can see the question he’s gearing up to in his expression as he slides the mug of coffee Snafu’s way; mouth a long hard line in his handsome, honest face. The sort of face that shows off every emotion that lies underneath it. It was always one of the big reasons why Snafu liked Burgie so much, at the beginning; he felt like he could never be lied to by him. “What’s wrong with you today?” He asks, like he hadn’t been the one to dish out Snafu’s morning cocktail of painkillers for the past two weeks, like he hasn’t been the one helping him from room to room, from apartment to street to that damned wheelchair whenever he wanted to have a change of scenery. 

_What d’you think?_ Snafu wants to bite out, but holds it back. It’s not Burgie’s fault, he knows that; if anything his mood has been better since the man had arrived. Less days spent in bed alternating between a painkiller haze and a painkiller hangover, and Snafu feels miles improved from that alone. “I’m just —” He pauses, presses his forehead to his palm. “I’m in pain.” He admits, and it’s as hard as ever to say the words. He feels Burgie about to respond, and heads him off before he can manage, “And I don’t want any goddamn painkillers, either.”

A beat of silence, and then Burgie recovers. He’s always been quick like that; solutions wracked up behind each other like bullets in a belt. “You been doin’ your PT?” The blank look that Snafu gives him is answer enough, and he nods, takes a sip of his coffee before replying. “Okay, we’ll do some this evening.”

Snafu has to resist the urge to physically recoil; instead reaching for his cigarettes, shaking one violently from the pack as he mutters, “No way.” The prospect of connecting with his body like that is daunting; he prefers to ignore as best he can how little he can actually do these days. The nurses in the hospital had forced him to do his PT, once his wounds were healed and he was deemed ‘fit’ enough to try, and Snafu can’t divorce that awful bitter shame that had come along with the exercises as the nurses had pulled him and posed him and made him sweat and hurt and shake with exhaustion. As if it wasn’t bad enough that he’d made it through a whole goddamn world _war_ and gotten harmed ten years after the fact, now he was forced to reconnect with that injustice every time he sat in one of this ugly metal hospital chairs, bending his knee over and over and over until he felt physically nauseous from the strain. The prospect of doing that in front of Burgie borders on terrifying, if Snafu could admit that he could be terrified by something so small. 

Burgie’s eyes flick heavenward for a second; his eye roll so quick that Snafu wouldn’t have seen it if he can’t been watching Burgie’s expression like a hawk. “Stop it.” He bites out, rolling the flint of his lighter over and over until it finally sparks, and he can light his cigarette. He draws a long breath through it; irritated, oddly vulnerable. “It’s not happening.”

“Yes it is.” Burgie murmurs, voice and expression bland as Snafu stares him down. And there’s frustration, now; mixed in with that irritation and that feeling of nervous vulnerability. Burgie’s always known when to push his buttons and when to back off, always known how to deal with Snafu when he’s at his most difficult. He’s self aware enough to at least see that. “If you don’t do those exercises your leg’ll never feel any better.”

“It ain’t gonna get better.” Snafu snaps, feeling his heartbeat pulsing in his knee. He thinks of blood, dark and near black soaking through the fabric of his jeans, and the very particular grinding of bone to shattered bone that he’d felt when he’d tried to stand. It had made him vomit, which was almost as embarrassing as all the workers on site seeing him hurt himself. “The doctors said so.”

Burgie tilts his head to the side, blue eyes turned sea glass in the bright morning light that falls over his face. It picks out the grey in his temples, the lines at the corners of his eyes, and Snafu thinks, _God, we’re getting old_ just as Burgie says, “I said _feel_ any better, Snaf. It ain’t so black and white, you ain’t doomed to pain just because your leg’s never gonna be the same again.”

“It sure feels like it.” He mutters, just to edge a response in, just for something to say. The kitchen is warm and silent around them, just the sound of the refrigerator fan and the slow burn of Snafu’s cigarette. Burgie doesn’t say anything else, just watches Snafu with that careful expression that he’s gotten so sick and tired of seeing on his face. It reminds him of war, of mud and rain and shit and blood, Burgie’s kind, dirty face and the thudthudthud of his heart whenever Gene would do as much as _breathe_ in his direction. _You’ve wasted a lot of time in pain_, a voice in his head offers him, and Snafu blinks down at the dark surface of his coffee as he processes that. The wave of bitterness that memories of the war always conjures in him now hits the back of his teeth, and he swallows, smears his hand over his face; suddenly exhausted. “What’s in it for me?” He asks, and doesn’t have to look at Burgie to see how his expression has shifted to smug delight. He always looks the same when he gets his way; his reliability is one of Snafu’s favourite things about him.

Burgie doesn’t fuck around telling him what’s _really_ in it for him; he must know the nurses had laboured the point of PT until Snafu felt like his ears were gonna bleed. Instead, he says, “Whiskey,” with such a tone of conspiratorial relish that Snafu laughs. 

“I ain’t allowed to drink on my meds.” He reminds him, feeling very warm under his breastbone at the smile which Burgie levels his way in response. 

“I won’t tell.” Burgie murmurs, and Snafu realises it’s affection, the warmth in his chest. Heavy, vital affection blooming red and steady between his lungs. He smiles, wobbly, chest glowing bright as Burgie leans forward to snag his cigarette from him, triumphant now the plan is set.

—————

Snafu cooks for the two of them that night; some last ditch attempt at some kind of display of independence before what he knows is going to be a long hour of embarrassment for him. PT, without fail, is always no more than a reminder of how unfamiliar the body he now has is to him. Gone are the days he could work a long, hot, physical day at the garage, and still find the energy to hop in the truck and go fishing. Gone are morning runs — when he remembered — or even strolls to the cornerstore for a pack of smokes. Now his knee shakes under him as he turns the pork chops in the skillet, so much so that he has to sit and take a break. Burgie doesn’t move to help him; stays sat at the table with his head bent over his book, but Snafu can feel his attention, even though he’s not looking. It’s in the suddenly alert line of his body, his tense stillness.

Snafu almost says something, but bites back on the comment. Unhelpful, ungrateful. Instead he rests his forehead to his hand and sighs, counting the seconds between spasms in his thigh until they ease. To think he’d ever marched hundreds of miles in days is laughable; his knee twinges just at the thought of it.

The pork burns. Burgie still eats it, and Snafu does too, because they’ve both known hunger, and both known bad food: burned pork barely makes the list at all. Besides, at least it’s something to throw up if the pain gnaws at him just so; there’s nothing worse than dry heaving through PT, it’s a feeling Snafu knows too well. 

“If you’re lying about the whiskey I’m never speaking to you again.” Snafu mutters, sat on the bed as he pulls a pair of shorts on. Burgie is on the other side of the room, washing dishes under the guise of it being ‘his turn’, though Snafu knows he does it to take the strain from him. It’s a silent battle of wills that Snafu sometimes relents to; after all, he’s always hated doing dishes. 

“That wouldn’t be such a hardship.” Burgie replies, but Snafu catches the smile he’s never been very good at hiding, and once again feels that odd warm bloom of affection deep in his chest. It knocks the scene askew for a second; Snafu gets caught up in the sight of Burgie’s forearms revealed past the rolled up sleeves of his shirt; suntanned and freckled, strong. Then Burgie speaks again and he glances away quickly, not wanting to be caught staring. “It’s your favourite, actually.”

“Oh, yeah?” Snafu says, trying his best to sound neutral. Like he isn’t feeling oddly flushed from something so ordinary as the sight of the man’s _forearms_.“What’s that, then?”

Burgie grins at him; something playful in the normally so sweet line of his mouth. “The cheapest,” He says, and Snafu can’t help but snort in amusement.

“Huh, you really do know me, Burg.”

His eyes crinkle. “You’d be surprised.” The final clatter of a dish to the draining board, and then Burgie is wiping his wet hands on his jeans, and Snafu guiltily follows the wet streak they make across the blue denim on his thighs. “C’mon, let’s get this over and done with then.”

Snafu’s heart rate spikes at the mere mention of it, an uncomfortably unfamiliar anxiety settling over him as Burgie gestures him over to his end of the apartment. This feels worse even than the prospect of doing PT at the hospital had; Snafu used to lie awake during the nights before and _dread_ it, dread it down to his bones, but this is something different. It occurs to him that Burgie has never seen him in such a state as this before; never seen him so weak and vulnerable and not himself, and that terrifies him. Burgie may have looked him in the eye and declared him ‘the same’ on that morning a handful of weeks ago, but Snafu is sure he’d never be able to do the same after this sorry show.

Nevertheless, he sits down the rug opposite Burgie, who had taken the time he’d been frozen with uncertainty to push the sofa and the coffee table back, with a grunt, his knee too stiff to make his descent to the ground anything close to graceful. 

“This fucking sucks.” He mutters, because he may be opening himself up to moving beyond this injury but not a force on this planet could keep him from complaining about it. Burgie just hums. 

“Think of the whiskey.” He says, and his hands are gentle on Snafu’s calf as he reaches forward to guide him into less of a twisted, awkward position. Snafu jumps at the touch, involuntary but embarrassing all the same. Burgie ignores it, because he’s a good person who doesn’t point out his friends’ glaringly obvious touch starved-ness. “Think of the cigarette you’ll have with it.” He continues, his big, rough hand cupping the back of Snafu’s knee, right over that knot of scar tissue, still chewed bubblegum-like; pink and ugly. 

“Think of my meds mixing with the booze.” Snafu responds sourly, leaned back on his hands with his good leg crossed underneath the awkward crook of the other. 

“That’s why I’ll be playin’ bartender tonight, Snaf.” Burgie murmurs, and then says, “Straighten out,” as those gentle, careful hands urge Snafu’s knee straighter, straighter, and then —

Snafu bites the inside of his mouth so hard he tastes blood. So hard that his eyes tear up a little from the pain, but it’s good — a good pain, far better than the awful sickly soul deep _hurt_ that Burgie’s hands are drawing from him. Not a bright, short pain — a star shell flown up through the inside of his body; intense but short lived. No, this was a slow creep, something consuming, something starving, something so deeply insidious that Snafu breaks from his internal battle to keep quiet, and gasps, “Stop,” as evenly as he can manage.

Burgie’s hands still on his leg, and his eyes are apologetic when he lifts them to meet Snafu’s. Whatever he sees in Snafu’s expression makes him press his lips together; mouth a flat line of contrition. “I’m sorry, Snaf,” he says, and Snafu drops his head back to look at the ceiling, recognising that tone in his voice all too well. _Sorry, Snaf, ten klicks ‘til we can bed down,_ he thinks, bitterly. _Sorry, Snaf, you’re with the rifles today._ The apology is genuine, but Burgie is not a man who can be budged. 

And sure enough. “It’s gotta be done. It’ll hurt less the more you do it.” 

“This hurts worse than it does on the daily.” He hisses, teeth gritted. His breath hitches in his chest when Burgie’s hands move on his leg; urging him to draw his knee back up into the bent position that still hurts, though it’s so far away from the hurt of trying to press it straight that it’s nothing, no more than background noise. 

“You know that ain’t true.” Burgie says, ever the voice of reason, ever Snafu’s oftentimes grudging North Star. “You wanna do this on a chair?”

“_No._” Snafu snaps, because he’s hurting and irritable and embarrassed and frustrated, and Burgie is the closest thing for him to take that all out on. He’s here, on the floor, with the end and the whiskey that comes with it not yet in sight — the last thing he wants to do is make an even bigger fool of himself and have Burgie watch him try and stand. “Just want this over and done with.”

“Okay.” Burgie says, bland, agreeable, and his thumbs nudge back into the dip behind Snafu’s knee, and they get it over and done with.

Afterwards, they stay sat on the floor with a cigarette, the bottle of whiskey holding court between them, and watch the shadows lengthen across the floors. Burgie makes no move to turn on any lamps, and Snafu isn’t sure he could stand if he tried, so they both let the shadows swallow them until all Snafu knows is the glass of whiskey dangling from his fingers, and the vague outline of Burgie; a smudge of darker black against the night. It’s a deadened kind of quiet between them, tonight. It reminds Snafu of Gloucester, of Okinawa, of humid nights spent too awake and exhausted to be afraid.

“No one ever told me healin’ was gonna hurt so bad.” Snafu says, eventually, once the whiskey has wormed right to his head and dulled the pain in his knee enough for him to begin to forget. He takes a sip from his glass, rolls the whiskey around in his mouth. “You always think healin’ is the absence of pain, huh?”

“Healin’s about comin’ out on the other _side_ of pain.” Burgie murmurs, head tipped back against the side of the sofa, his face in shadow. Snafu feels a surge of quiet affection, appreciation, and pinches at the skin between thumb and pointer finger, squeezing until the feeling goes away.

“How’d you know so much about all this anyway?” Snafu asks, and Burgie shifts the bottle just out of his reach as he goes to grab at it, to refill his glass. “Aw, c’mon.”

“My brother lost a leg during the war.” He replies, ignoring Snafu — who is feeling admittedly lightheaded from the swirl of painkillers and whiskey in his stomach. “I used to drive him out to appointments.” There’s little emotion in his tone; Snafu squints through the dim room in the hopes of catching something in his expression, but his face is as impassive as his voice.

“I didn’t know you had a brother.” His voice comes out low, quiet. It’s impossible to suppress the sickly envy at this nameless, faceless brother, getting injured exactly where a man is supposed to get injured. Snafu is just drunk enough to allow the feeling room to creep through him; awful, evil, bitter thing that he is.

Burgie smiles, something soft and sad and sweet in it. “Isn’t it funny the things that don’t seem important during wartime?” And then his eyes swing around and he looks at Snafu, really looks at him. “And then you get out and you go home and all you can think about is how you wish you’d realised what was really important.”

The moment stretches, and slows; pulls like taffy as they regard each other through the darkening room, Burgie’s eyes dark blue through the gloom. Then he blinks, and Snafu swallows, drunk and lightheaded, his fingers pinching uselessly at his hand.

“Is that why you came here?” He asks, and his tongue feels slow in his mouth, body warm all over — he realises distantly that for once he has no pain; he feels as though he could stand with ease, could move to his knees and close that foot of space between him and Burgie. Past the ashtray, past the whiskey, knees on the rug and his hand — his mouth — his lips —

Nail breaks skin, that thin webbing of thumb and index. Snafu barely notices.

Burgie’s face twists. “Something like that.” He pauses, and Snafu’s silence must spur him on, because he clears his throat, and adds, “I was worried about you, you don’t —“ He trails off. “I was surprised to hear from you, that’s all. I knew it must’ve been serious to get you writing me.”

Snafu cocks his head to the side, detaching from Burgie’s gaze for a moment to watch the blinds rattle in the breeze through the open window. It brings with it the smell of the street, of garbage and hot earth, and something about it reminds him so ridiculously of Pelielu that he blurts, “Remember New Year?” He draws his finger around the rim of his empty glass, everything feeling quite dreamy, quite distant. Burgie’s eyes burn through the blue night. Snafu can tell he remembers; doesn’t need to say anything more.

New Year, just minutes into 1944. The two of them sat together that one warm night the Japanese had decided to give them off after an evening of exchanging fire in increasingly boring volleys. The mortar cooling between them, the darkness of the night so complete that all Snafu had known was the flare of the tip of a cigarette, Burgie’s dirty face tired and hollow-looking in the light of it. _How come you’re allowed to smoke?_ Snafu had asked him, and the next breath drawn through the cigarette had illuminated amusement in Burgie’s eyes. _Because I’m your sergeant,_ he’d replied, and Snafu had snapped, playfully, _bastard_.

Then they had laughed. And Snafu had produced the hooch he’d been keeping secret for a little while, and then, and then, and then —

Snafu had been hung up so bad on Gene he didn’t know much beyond spidery white writers’ hands, beyond dark red hair and the surprising attractiveness of his sweet, expressive mouth. Burgie had asked him, _You like men?_ — only Snafu knows he’s remembering it wrong — the alcohol has him pleasantly loopy. It hadn’t been a question, and Snafu remembers that because of the amusement he’d felt, secondary to the nerves. Was he really so obvious? And because he was so hung up on Gene and because he’d always been at his very core a love struck fool, he’d nodded; some misplaced want for it to get around back to Gene, for him to _know_.

And Burgie, constant surprise that he was, that he is, had replied, _me too_.

“So tell me,” Snafu murmurs, feeling wicked and brave as he watches Burgie’s expression change. The room tilts on its axis. “Is that why you came here?” He remembers the jolt of shock at Burgie’s admittance, then the immediate and warm feeling of allyship that had followed.

“You’re drunk.” Burgie says, now; this current version of him older, softer, more tired. Snafu can recall him from those years as easily as breathing, as easily as remembering Gene’s face. Handsome and broad cheekboned and quick to smile. “Never did I think I’d see Snafu Shelton drunk off one drink.” Then he’s silent, silent for a long time; long enough to pour himself a fresh drink, to light himself a fresh cigarette. “You were in love with Eugene.”

“You were in love with Florence.” Snafu counters with, and Burgie snorts.

“And look at us now.” He says, and smiles, soft and sad. Snafu turns his eyes to the floor, to the empty glass between his knees, and when he glances back up Burgie is watching him, something unreadable in his eyes. “I loved you.” He murmurs, and the words send a warm little spark of pleasant surprise through Snafu. Burgie must see the shock on Snafu’s face because he laughs, looks away. They’re back in the darkness, back in the stink of that island, back to Snafu watching for the minutiae of Burgie’s expressions in the sporadic flares of a cigarette. “You ever knew that?” He takes a drag, and Snafu inhales too, lungs filling with night air. 

“I know now.” He flicks his thumb against the side of his glass, bracing himself, and asks, “Did you really?”

The clink of the bottle to the rim of a glass, the slosh of the liquor hitting the inside. Snafu waits, hand to his mouth as he passes his tongue over the broken skin between his thumb and fingers. He can taste blood — the promise of blood, rather. A few more laters of dermis and he’d have bled, he’s sure. Another gust of wind rattles the blinds, fills the room with that smell that is New Orleans and Pelielu all at once. _It’s gonna rain_, he thinks, distantly, eyes unerring on the shadow of Burgie’s profile. 

“Love ain’t the right word.” He says, eventually, and tips his head back against the sofa he’s sat against. Then he laughs, smears a hand across his face. “Jesus, Snaf. Weren’t everybody a little infatuated with you?”

Snafu laughs; surprised. “No.” He says, firm. “No, Burg, I don’t think so.” He thinks of himself at twenty-two; angry and volatile and truly mean. Fucking _hungry_; bite the hand that feeds. He doesn’t know how anyone had put up with him, though most didn’t for long. It’s a little sobering to realise that his injury has made him regress somewhat; Snafu is sure he’s never spent so much time treading water in angry bitterness since he was in his twenties. But then Burgie speaks again, and Snafu is tugged away from that particular rabbit hole of thought.

“You make an impact.” He says, amused. There’s a slight drag to his words, a slowness that tells Snafu he’s beginning to feel the effects of his drinking, and Snafu is too. His eyelids feel heavy, the ache in his knee returning now from how long he’s spent sat on the ground. He presses his thumb into the side of it, closing his eyes at the dull ache.

“I don’t quite cut the same figure I used to.” He says, and Burgie laughs. 

“You look exactly the same.” He says, and shuffles closer, the movement bringing him into the square of light thrown from the streetlamp outside the window. Pale lashes catch the deep orange light, and Snafu feels something huge and unknowable settle into his chest as Burgie replaces Snafu’s hand on his knee with his own. “I bet you ain’t even gained an _ounce_ since you were twenty-three.” He continues, something fond and nostalgic in his voice, easing his thumbs into where Snafu is beginning to _ache_. That knot of scar tissue, his poor excuse for a knee. Blame the whiskey, blame the pain, blame his loneliness, his penchant for nostalgia, for lovesickness, but he wants, he _wants_. So much. He wants to be able to close the gap between him and Burgie with an ease he knows he no longer possesses. He wants to be whole again, wants to no longer feel the horribly familiar anxiety for his own body that always sends him right back to the war. He wants to know whether he wants to kiss Burgie because he feels something real for him, or whether it’s because he’s drunk, up to his eyeballs with painkillers, dreadfully lonely and hard up for a little affection. 

“I need to go to bed.” He says, watching Burgie’s hands on his leg; pale against his skin. He feels tired, drunk, removed from himself — there’s no way to respond to Burgie’s words so he doesn’t. Just moves back from Burgie’s touch, bracing his hands to the coffee table behind him, and gritting his teeth he works himself up first to sitting on the edge of it, and then to standing. And it hurts — muscles shaky with the effort, with the residual soreness from the PT, but having Burgie help him to his feet would have hurt more. He wishes he could go back to not twenty minutes ago, back to that dreamy moment of fantasy; knee to the rug, hand to Burgie’s jaw, mouth —

He wobbles slightly, and Burgie’s hand is catching his wrist before he can even think about righting himself. Faster than a drunk man should be, though Burgie has always been so capable that it shouldn’t come as a surprise that he’s had an eye on Snafu from the moment he’d forced himself up from the floor alone. His palm is hot against the inside of Snafu’s wrist, against the thud of his pulse, and Snafu barely has time to think, _oh, do I? —_ before Burgie’s fingers tighten just so slightly, so imperceptibly, that Snafu is urged closer without anything needing to be said.

Burgie smells like soap and like sweat, whiskey on his breath as his thumb presses right to Snafu’s pulse, right to that green little knot of veins below the skin, and Snafu kisses him. Kisses him, and lets himself be kissed, knee shuddering pain up through his body as Burgie cups his face so tenderly with his free hand that he feels sure he could cry, if he let it. Burgie’s mouth is gentle on his own; almost hesitant with how gently he’s kissing him. Like Snafu is some small, precious thing, like this is something which Burgie has been wanting to do for so long he has to savour it, draw it out. Snafu has never been kissed so tenderly; it makes him feel all full up behind his eyes, overwhelmed in such a way which just toes the line of uncomfortable.

Then Burgie takes a step back, and Snafu follows; swaying into the broad line of his body as though a fishhook is tugging deep in his guts, connecting them both. It’s his turn to kiss Burgie, head swimming as he skates his fingernails through the cropped short hair at the base of Burgie’s skull; clutching at him, pressing so close together that he can feel sweat springing up on his chest. Burgie has him by the waist, supporting him for where Snafu’s knee cannot, and the feeling of being so silently taken care of, his needs so intuitively answered, makes him rake his nails down Burgie’s nape, overwhelmed. Burgie shivers at the touch, mouth opening reflexively on a small noise that sounds as though it’s wrenched from him, something low and deep and intimate. 

“Burg.” The room is pitch around them, only that square of lamp-lit orange on the carpet where they had sat; Snafu yearns for the glow of a cigarette, for the blinding absolution of a star shell, anything that would reveal Burgie’s expression to him now; the two of them broken apart, inches from each other. He can feel Burgie’s breath on his face, his hands tightening in the fabric of Snafu’s t-shirt, and then two gentle little kisses follow; one to his forehead, one to his cheek. They make him want to cry for some emotion he can’t put his finger on fully; it may be the pain beginning to bloom once more, it might be the naked affection and near-love he can practically feel radiating from the man pressed so close to him. Instead he worries his lip between his teeth, chewing at the skin until it feels raw as he moves his hands from Burgie’s nape to his face, drawing his fingers gently over his expression.

“I never know what you’re thinking.” Burgie murmurs, and Snafu traces uncertainty, traces kiss-swollen lips. His eyes flutter shut when Snafu reaches them, touching his fingertips to those short, pale lashes, to those charming crows feet he finds he likes so much. They always show up when Burgie smiles, which he does often; that’s one thing that hasn’t changed. 

“I ain’t so complex.” He breathes, hands fanning out over Burgie’s jaw as he leans close to kiss him again; softly, quickly. “Come to bed.” He says, and Burgie doesn’t move, so he drops his hand to Burgie’s, and says again, “Come to bed.”

Burgie has been sleeping on the couch, and no amount of complaining from Snafu had budged him. _We slept in the same goddamn foxhole_, he’d said, to which Burgie had replied, coolly, _you snore_, as he’d made up his bed on the couch. Snafu knows it was to give him space, but suspects now something more may have been behind the decision. Burgie is still hesitating; what Snafu can see of his face in the dark room looks torn, brow furrowed.

“You’re drunk.” He says again.

“So are you.”

A car rumbles by on the cobbles outside the window, the headlights sweeping across the room for a second before it passes. Burgie must see something in Snafu’s expression in that split second of illumination because Snafu sees his face change; sees him come over all soft, all wanting. Those blue eyes close, and he kisses Snafu again, hand to the small of his back as he presses him to his front. 

Snafu’s knee is trembling, the pain beginning to gnaw at the muscles of his thigh; it’s a welcome relief when he and Burgie stumble together into the bed, the weight taken off his hurting, burning knee so all he’s left with is the residuals of the PT, and the near-constant throb that is background noise to him at this point. Burgie’s mouth finds his throat, his collarbones, and his tongue is salty from the sweat when he licks his way into Snafu’s mouth a moment later. The world feels blurred, the boundaries unravelling very slightly, just enough for Snafu to forget his pain, forget his embarrassment about a body that can’t do what he wants it to. All he knows is Burgie’s mouth on his, the hard and insistent press of their bodies, Burgie’s hand cupped so gently at the back of his knee that Snafu is sure he _does_ cry. Burgie kisses his cheeks, his eyes, his mouth, and everything is salt; tears, sweat. It’s impossible to tell which is which, and to Snafu is feels like something so close to healing that he’s surprised it doesn’t render him immobile with the pain he’s come to associate with it. 

Afterwards, they lie together on their backs, sweat cooling in the midnight air as they pass a cigarette between themselves. Snafu feels raw, vulnerable, and it’s not a bad feeling but it’s enough to have him tuck his face close to Burgie’s anyway. Just to watch the smoke stream from his nostrils, to watch him blink slow and sleepy at the ceiling above them. The fan turns, shifting hot summer air over their bodies, and Snafu watches Burgie try to speak twice before he settles on, “Snaf, when I say you’re still full of surprises.”

He snorts, and Burgie passes the cigarette to Snafu, who takes a deep drag from it before he murmurs, “You ever think we’d be here, ten years ago?”

Burgie shifts; an approximation of a shrug. “Maybe.” Then he huffs, and when Snafu glances to the side he’s smiling, something wry and self deprecating. “Probably just wishful thinking.”

“What about a month ago?” Snafu presses, and Burgie turns his face, cheek pressed to the pillow, hair mussed and sticking up sweetly from his head. Snafu reaches out to smooth it down, cigarette smoking away between his fingers, and Burgie catches his hand; holds him there, his cheek under Snafu’s broad palm. He doesn’t have to respond; Snafu can see his answer in his expression, in the hopeful, near-embarrassed twist of his mouth, the hesitancy in his eyes. Snafu thinks of his fingers on the knotted scar tissue of his leg, and murmurs, “What did you really think when you saw me again?”

Burgie’s eyelids dip, a smile just curling the edge of his mouth before he turns his face to kiss Snafu’s palm and the smile is lost. “It was like seein’ you for the first time all over again.” He murmurs, and Snafu’s fingers curl against his face, ash falling hot to his knuckles from the cigarette. But it’s a small pain, a little pain, and when Burgie kisses him, one Snafu finds he can ignore.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading! join the snurgie conspiracy!


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